Peace Bike - an unusual contraption made of two bicycles, it had its own power source which was used to drive
a loud sound system

The world suffering the toxic fumes of US-UK aggression

Sea of anti-Bush placards

Bruce Kent

Bruce
Kent, vice-president CND.

"This is the seventh
time in just over a year that I have spoken to
over a 100,000 people, this is becoming a habit!
Thank you for coming, its marvelous to see so
many people!

We the people are on the march!
I am standing behind someone [statue of Bush]
to whom I would not give hospitality in my home
for five minutes. I do not welcome criminals,
I do not welcome liars, and I do not welcome the
most dangerous man in this world because this
man has under his control probably 15,000 nuclear
weapons and he is making more nuclear weapons
and he is tearing up the treaties that were meant
to stop them, and he saying to other people you
can't have nuclear weapons but I can have nuclear
weapons and the israelis can have nuclear weapons,
and I'm not to fussed about the indians and pakistanis.
This world is becoming very dangerous because
of the policies of this man and when he comes
down from that statue I shall be delighted and
so will you.

This Illegal War
Who? Paid and Lost
Who? Promoted and Profited

I know I've only got a short
minute so let me say something about another kind
of no. No to that, but no also to the way that
the world is run. Last night I was in a hospital
in Queens Square with an old man of 95, Joseph
Rotblat(*). Joseph
Rotblat in 1944 with every career in front of
him as a scientist refused to work on the atomic
bomb. They said he was a communist and that he
was a traitor. I think he's a hero because he
said no. I will go back to his bed side tomorrow
and I'll tell him that you gave him a great cheer
for pointing to another world.

Next april please God I shall
be standing outside a prison on the 22 of April
in Ashkalon in Israel when Mordecau
Vannunu comes out of 18 years in prison -
18 years! Let us thank God for the courage of
people who said no. And let me add to that the
courage of israeli pilots who refused to fly now
in to the West Bank, they are brave people. I
would like you to remember the three
nuns, three dominican nuns in America who
are now doing 8 years in prison for opposing the
policies of George Bush - 8 years. Three elderly
nuns, people who say no are the heroes of this
world. And we in all our lives have to say no
to a world of cruelty, of division between rich
and poor, of spoiling the environment - we say
no to all these things. And I will leave you with
a slogan which comes from Seattle, and Genoa,
and all these other places: "another world
is possible!"

Bush: How Much Blood Do You Need?
(We can't translate the Japanese, if you know what it means let us know )

(*) Information
on Professor
Joseph Rotblat:

Professor Joseph
Rotblat was one of the early physicists working
in the field of atomic physics and nuclear fission.
Afraid that that nazi Germany might be developing
an atomic bomb, it was actually Joseph Rotblat
who in 1939 suggest to James Chadwick (discovered
the neutron) that they should start work on developing
an atomic bomb.

It was his belief
that the bomb would never be used. It would, he
thought, be created for only one reason: to deter
Germany. 'Later on, I realised that this concept
of nuclear deterrence is flawed'.

He tried to get
his fellow scientists to think twice about pressing
ahead with building a bomb. Some of them agreed
with him, and tried to raise the matter with the
President. But others couldn't resist seeing whether
the bomb could be made and what was the extent
of its power.

And as soon as
he heard confirmation, supplied by scientific
intelligence reports towards the end of 1944,
that the German scientists had abandoned their
atomic bomb programme, to his credit, he left
the Manhattan Project and returned to Britain.

The Los Alamos
military authority threatened Joseph Rotblat with
arrest if he discussed with anyone his reasons
for leaving. He broke his silence in August 1945
after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.

'It came as a
terrible shock. My idea had been to make the bomb
to prevent it being used, and here it had been
used immediately after it was made, and against
civilian populations.'

The number
of those killed by the end of 1945 by the
atomic bombs on Hiroshima on August 6 and
Nagasaki on August 9 of that year are estimated
to be 140,000
in Hiroshima and 70,000
in Nagasaki (NGO symposium in 1977).

He started by
giving talks all over Britain, trying to persuade
fellow physicists to halt nuclear research. In
1946 he co-founded the Atomic Scientists Association
of Britain, whose members were opposed to the
military use of nuclear power.

As far as Joseph
Rotblat's own work was concerned, he immediately
changed direction. He began to study radiation
and its application to health, and from 1950 to
1976 was the much-respected Professor of Physics
at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London.

Later he helped
Bertrand Russell formulate a manifesto against
nuclear weapons which was signed by eleven scientists
including Albert Einstein. This led to the "Pugwash
Conferences" on Science and World Affairs
attended by scientists from around the world.
In 1995 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the
Pugwash Conferences and Joseph Rotblat jointly.

He was a co-founder
of the UK Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)
in 1958; but later parted when CND committed to
unilateral disarmament.

Three Dominican Nuns Ardeth Platte (66 years old),
Jackie Hudson (68), and Carole Gilbert (55), left to right,
outside the court at sentencing - their sentences totaled over 8 years.

Elderly
Nuns Charged With Sabotage

On October 6, 2002, three Dominican nuns -- Jackie Hudson, 68; Ardeth Platte, 66; and Carole Gilbert, 55 -- entered a military base in northern Colorado to nonviolently witness against its Minuteman III nuclear missiles. Each of these intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) carries the destructive power of 300,000 tons of TNT and is on high alert to launch a nuclear war as part of the US's first-strike policy.

The three sisters were wearing white suits on which they had boldly lettered "CWIT (Citizens Weapons Inspection Team)" on the backs and "Disarmament Specialist" across the fronts.

They symbolically disarmed the nuclear missile by using ordinary household hammers on the tracks and by taking baby bottles filled with their own blood and pouring it in the form of crosses on the missile silo's 110-ton concrete cover. (At the trial, government witnesses testified that they did not damage it, but they were convicted anyway.)

The nuns said they were compelled to act as war with Iraq moved closer. The sisters said they shed their own blood in the effort to stop the inevitable bloodshed of countless members of God's family if these weapons were to be used.

"The hope of the world rests on each of our shoulders, We are doing our part. What about you?"

68 year old Jackie Hudon's message to the court as she and her fellow nuns were
sentenced to 8 years and 8 months in prison.

The sisters chose the site in Colorado specifically because the U.S. Space Command, which threatens domination and exploitation of outer space, is located in Colorado Springs. The 49 nuclear-armed missiles in Colorado have recently been refitted with W-87 nuclear warheads, each with an explosive power of approximately 25 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb. They are not for defence but rather form part of the US's "first-strike" policy. "In our statement, prepared prior to acting, we are clear in making the connection between the Minuteman III and the US policy calling for domination and exploitation of outer space (Statement of the US Space Command, Vision for 2020)."

Their statement continued: "The items we left at N-8 reveal our knowledge of Nuremberg Principles, Geneva Conventions. U.S. Constitution and various other International laws and treaties. We know that any threat to use or use of the Minuteman III missile located at N-8 is grossly illegal and criminal specifically in violation of the 'intransgressible rules and principles of humanitarian law' as described by the International Court of Justice and understood by the U.S. as binding law in and for the U.S. We acted out of what we understand is a legal right, duty or privilege to interfere with, and stop ongoing imminent threat or use of a weapon that is criminal under U.S. law. We entered N-8 with no criminal intent, but rather to uphold the law....

"In the end we know that the World Court has declared that "all" nuclear weapons are illegal, including those held by the U.S. The symbolic disarmament of the Minuteman III, on high-alert, is a warning to the nation and the world that these God awful weapons are evil in hands of any nation."

The three nuns enter the nuclear missile silo
wearing white suits on which they had boldly lettered
"CWIT (Citizens Weapons Inspection Team)" on the
backs and "Disarmament Specialist" across the fronts.

The three nuns were charged with Sabotage and Malicious Destruction of Property of the United States. These charges carry a maximum sentences of 30 years and up to half a million dollars fine.

The nuns tried to use the international law argument in their defence, but U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn was swayed by the U.S. attorney's argument that U.S. law supersedes international law,and in a 32 page instruction barred the jury from hearing international law and Nuremberg defences during the trial.

As the federal jury convicted the three nuns, Sister Gilbert shouted to the jury, "We will not be found guilty under God's law."

Asked if vandalizing the silo was illegal, Hudson said:
"When someone holds a gun to your head or someone else's head do you not have a right and a duty to enter that arena and stop that crime?"

The sentencing took place in July 2003. Just before the nuns went inside to be sentenced they defiantly told a crowd of 150 supporters outside the courthouse they were not afraid of prison.

"Whatever sentence I receive today will be joyfully accepted as an offering for peace and with God's help it will not injure my spirit," Platte said. She choked up, stopped speaking and was hugged by the other sisters.

"The hope of the world rests on each of our shoulders," Hudson said. "We are doing our part. What about you?"

The nuns were were sentenced to prison terms totaling between them of 8 years and 8 months.

"power!
power!
power to the people
coz the people got the power
tell me can you feel it?
getting stronger by the power
power!
power!

That special relationship

This following poem is composed entirely of actual quotes from George W. Bush. It was compiled and arranged by Washington Post writer Richard Thompson.

Make the Pie Higher

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen
And uncertainty
And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the internet
Become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pant leg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish
Can coexist.

Families is where our nation finds hope
Where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!

The Blair Bush Project
Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid!!!

During a war for oil a placard reads
"Thank God There's No Oil In EnglandOr We'd Be Next"

"Israel is the real terrorism.
Imagine what kind of desperation
makes a Palestinian a suicide bomber"

Tom Hurndall moments after being shot in the head by
Israeli snipers as he helped Palestinian children cross a street.

Tribute
to Tom Hurndall, .

"One other person I think
we should remember today - Tom Hurndall, a young
man who on the 15th of February stood in this
square was so moved by what he knew was happening
around the world, so determined that he had to
do something that he went to the West Bank to
help the Palestinian struggle. And in the course
of the time he was there he was shot by the Israeli
army and he is now still on a life support machine.
He is somebody who represents the way that young
people have taken up this whole struggle, have
built a movement, have widened it, have recognised
that there has to be change and have been determined
to put his own life in danger. He is somebody
we should remember as well!"

If my intelligent, courageous son, Tom, had not been left severely brain damaged by an Israeli soldier, he would have vouched for the fact that I am not prone to speechlessness. Words now fail me.

Two days ago, I received notification from my bank that the cheque sent by Israel's ambassador, for a fraction of the expenses incurred by the family for Tom's repatriation and for which we have had to wait five months, had not been honoured by the Bank of Israel. "Insufficient funds" was the reason given.

This is one of a catalogue of actions which can only be perceived as an illustration of the contempt shown towards the issue of Tom's shooting. We endeavoured for weeks, through the British embassy and the media, to have a meeting with somebody in the Israeli government who might give us some response as to what happened before we finally met representatives. Recently, the Israeli ambassador in London arranged a meeting which was subsequently cancelled without proper explanation.

As money is so tight, might it not be appropriate for Israel to channel less towards its illegal "security" fences or the development of remote control bulldozers and more towards the rebuilding of destroyed houses in Palestine and other debts, such as Tom's repatriation?

It is a mind-numbing task to understand the morality and to use the logic of the Israeli government. What hope do Palestinians have when such profound disregard and disrespect is shown to humanity, collectively and individually?

In the pensive hours of the night, I am struck by the varying values that mankind chooses to allot to life - as was my son Tom.

Earlier this month, I read with mixed feelings the news that local Palestinian militia had dynamited an Israeli defence force watchtower in the town of Rafah, in the Gaza Strip. It was from this watchtower, which has been responsible for untold misery to many innocent families in Rafah, that Tom was shot in the head last April. At the time he was trying to help Palestinian children to safety. He now lies in a vegetative state in a hospital in London with no hope of recovery.

This week we learned that the Israeli soldier who has been arrested for the shooting is alleged to have smoked cannabis with his battalion. As last year was drawing to a close, a phone call from the British Foreign Office informed me that, under interrogation, this soldier has confessed to shooting my son, knowing he was an unarmed civilian. He claimed that the shot was meant as a "deterrent". From what? From rescuing children? Had he been so conditioned that an act of humanity could only inspire in him such a violent reaction?

I felt no sense of relief then but, for the first time, allowed myself to feel increasing anger. The IDF's inability to differentiate between friend and foe, truth and untruth, and to see themselves as they are seen, is clear to all.

I read the observations recorded in Tom's Middle-East journals. They show a young man determined to be open-minded, to understand and, above all, to make a difference. He had come to understand, as we do now, the customary illegal, inhuman retribution exacted by the IDF from this particular watchtower on the local community, little realising how it was to leave him a thread away from death.

"End the Occupation",
an Israeli flag with a tank as its focus

It seems that life is cheap in the occupied territories. Different value attached to life depends on whether the victim happens to be Israeli, international or Palestinian. This has been exemplified recently by the reaction of the Israeli public to the shooting of an Israeli peace activist, fresh out of his three-year military police service, demonstrating against the illegal "security" fence. Two days later an announcement was made that a military police inquiry was to be held into the shooting. Questions were raised in the Knesset. This is in stark contrast to the six months of campaigning that it took for an inquiry to be launched into the shooting of Tom.

There have been thousands of killings in Palestine since the intifada, with only a handful having the benefit of an investigation. Now, a three-week occupation of Nablus (the largest city in Palestine) has left a further 19 people dead and dozens of homes and buildings destroyed, leaving scores of innocent people homeless, all on a pretext of searching for a terror suspect.

When will those responsible accept that it is illegal to collectively and obsessively punish a whole community? Has the hard-nosed Sharon government made connections between the horror of the Holocaust and the current brutal incursions? Countless insightful Israelis, Palestinians and people the world over have done so. Is it surprising that Israel was voted the most dangerous threat to world peace in a recent European Union poll?

It hurts me to hear the deafening silence of our own government. How can there have been no statement of condemnation or condolence for the innocent victims of Israel's mindless violence from our own prime minister, Tony Blair? The silence was only broken when on Christmas day the United States president "strongly condemned" the actions of the suicide bombers responsible for killing four Israeli soldiers at a bus stop just outside Tel Aviv. Does this double standard not underline the lack of regard in which both the British and US governments hold Palestinian life?

So I have questions to ask of Tony Blair. Does he regard the children of Palestine as children of a lesser god? Does he accept that such inaction is tantamount to complicity in the process of destroying any peace initiative in the Middle East? Mr Blair, you know now that an Israeli soldier has confessed to shooting in cold blood an unarmed British citizen who was trying to shepherd children away to safety. When will you be ready to openly condemn these actions?

Moments before murder
-
A Vietnamese woman with an American gun to her head

An
Old American Habit

Alarmingly some people have been duped
in to seeing the bloody US occupation of Afghanistan
and Iraq as an aberration - as US foreign policy gone
wrong - as America hijacked by a war mongering president.
This analysis is wrong and what's more its dangerous,
as it absolves the US of a history of crimes against
humanity by blaming it all on one presidency gone
bad. History shows us that America's crimes against
the world did not start with the Bush presidency and
if we choose to ignore this then they will not end
with his presidency. The struggle isn't against Bush
but rather against American Hegemony - continued
american domination of the world.

Peoples memories are short, so here
we present a brief glimpse of another US occupation:

Vietnam has a long history of foreign
occupation and gallant resistance to it- French, Japanese,
then French again, and finally American occupation.
Upon the French defeat in 1954 it was agreed in the
Geneva Peace Accords that a temporary division of
Vietnam along the seventeenth parallel would occur
for two years and then in June 1956 elections would
be held for a unified Vietnam. But, as President Eisenhower
noted in his memoirs, Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese
national hero who had led his people to victory against
the french would have won the the election by a landslide
("at least 80%"), so the elections were
never held. Eisenhower having dispensed with democratic
elections, instead installed the brutal dictatorship
of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam. Diem, a Catholic,
persecuted both Buddhists and Communists alike, he
was hated by the people and only managed to stay in
power by US support.

People in the south were ready to rise up and were getting impatient with the lack of action from the north. After witnessing its people in the south
suffer six years of tyrannical rule, North Vietnam
finally gave up trying to unify the country through
political means and supported the creation in 1960
of the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam.
America, under Kennedy's presidency, meanwhile poured in 1000s of "advisers"
to help prop up their dictator. Then, in 1964, President
Lyndon Johnson announced that the North Vietnamese
had attacked two US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, (historians today admit that Johnson had lied and
the attack never happened), and obtained Congressional
approval of a resolution, which had been drafted before
the Tonkin Incident, authorizing him to retaliate
and so began what the Americans call the Vietnam war.

The US reign of terror in Vietnam is
well known. Countless massacres of civilians, whole
villages burned to the ground, systematic raping and
sodomizing of Vietnamese girls, torture followed by
mutilation of the murdered, water wells poisoned,
use of chemical and biological agents on civilian
populations, were among the atrocities committed by
the strongest military power in the world against
one of the weakest. The US sent in over half a million
troops, and dropped more bombs on Vietnam than fell
on Europe during World War II. For the Vietnamese
it was a holocaust, five million* Vietnamese were
killed. (*figure released. April
3, 1995, includes those killed as a result of Agent Orange)

"Agent Orange Babies"

Extract from article "But what of our weapons?"
by John Pilger, 4 May1999

Babies deformed due to the use of chemical weapons
by the US in Vietnam [American War Crimes Museum, Vietnam]

Between 1961 and 1971, American planes dropped on South Vietnam a defoliant, Agent Orange , which contained dioxin, a poison that causes foetal death, congenital defects and cancer. Even after a Congressional inquiry revealed that the equivalent of six pounds of dioxin had been dumped on every man, woman and child in South Vietnam, the spraying continued. A pattern of deformities began to emerge: babies born without eyes, with deformed hearts and small brains and stumps instead of legs.In the towns and cities, it was not unusual to see deformed children begging. They were known as ' Agent Orange babies '.

Recently, at the Tu Do hospital in Saigon, I was shown a group of newborn babies , all of whom had Agent Orange deformities. The war that officially ended in 1975 goes on; contaminated soil and water are poisoning a third generation. Unlike American and Australian veterans of the war, who have been finally compensated by the manufacturers of dioxin, the Vietnamese have received nothing. Now a five-year Canadian study has discovered that dioxin runs right through Vietnam's food chain and has called for international help in decontaminating agricultural land, forests and waterways. The cost of one F-16 bomber would pay for this...

With an iron resolve to resist occupation,
the South Vietnamese in 1968 launched a grassroots
uprising against the occupiers - "The Tet Offensive." Although it was brutally put down, it marked the the
beginning of the end for American occupation in Vietnam.
By 1975, the Americans were defeated and Saigon, the southern capital, was
liberated. The peace agreement Nixon signed included
a promise to pay $3.25 billion towards reparation.
As in war, in peace the words of an American President
could not be relied upon and none of it was ever paid.

The Prisoner They Couldn't Break...By Mrs. Truong My Hoa*

A re-creation of a political prisoner being chained
by the ankles in a cell in one of the "Tiger Cages."
[American War Crimes Museum, Vietnam]

The war ended fifteen years ago in victory for our people, but the country remains devastated. We say that victory cannot match our suffering. After all, the United States sent their troops over here with the intent to destroy all, burn all, and kill all. They destroyed the land.

In the South, the Americans burned villages and herded the women and children into camps surrounded by barbed wire. South Vietnam became an enormous prison. Many children couldn't go to school, people weren't free to work their land. They killed brutally, indiscriminately. You remember the massacre at My Lai, in Quang Ngai province. There were many other villages where the people were massacred. My Lai was only the worst.

Women everywhere were raped, killed, arrested, beaten. Pregnant women's bellies were cut open and their unborn babies thrown into burning houses. Thousands of women were imprisoned. Some were suspected V.C., some were real fighters, many were just ordinary people who were arrested and jailed for no reason. There were prisons all over the South. There were central prisons and provincial prisons and district prisons. Mothers with babies and pregnant women were arrested. They arrested old people and children and even handicapped people. I remember in Con Son prison there was an old blind woman, Mrs. Sau. She was kept in a tiger cage, with five or six people, all in a cage, covered by iron poles.

I was imprisoned in Con Son from 1964 to 1975. I had been a student in Ho Chi Minh City-Saigon at that time. I attended meetings and went to demonstrations to demand freedom and democracy. The South Vietnamese arrested me when I was nineteen, and I was thirty by the time I was released. All my family was active in the resistance for fifty years, and we each spent a long time in prison. My husband, too, spent fourteen years in jail, longer than me.

We were beaten and tortured. They had all kinds of sexual torture for the women. And we were so hungry. When I was kept in the tiger cage at Con Son, I was given only a small tin of water and a little bowl of rice each day. There was a lot of sand, and when the winds blew, the sand covered our rice bowls. And flies, flies everywhere. Con Son was filthy and cold, a stone prison on a cold, windy island. We had one set of clothing a year. We never went outside, never bathed. We tore rags off our clothing for our menstrual periods, so that we were left with practically nothing to cover our bodies. There were all kinds of disease-dysentery, typhoid, cholera, malaria, small pox. Every morning we woke up wondering who had died in the night. There was no medicine. they said we could only have medicine if we would salute the South Vietnamese flag. We always refused. Many of my comrades died of disease, of hunger, of torture.

I spent a year in the tiger cage. On top they kept limestone and a water pot. If prisoners talked to each other they poured water and limestone [forming a caustic chemical which burns the skin on contact] over us, and if we cried they beat us with sticks, and then let the limestone burn our wounds. You can see right here, my forehead is scarred. They stuck sharp pins in my head. That was excruciating torture. I still have the scars. Many women never recovered.

The interrogators were always puppet troops. The Americans were the advisers. Sometimes they came there. We liked to say that the Americans had to change the color of their bodies. Too many of their soldiers were dying, so they had to use Vietnamese to kill Vietnamese.

Children in the South suffered terribly, and still suffer. They were left orphaned, with no homes, no food, no schools. They became beggars, dope dealers, thieves. We have orphans, and widows and grieving mothers. We sing songs that tell the suffering of women who sent their sons to battle. And there are many women who never married because so many men in our country were killed. That's always the case in war. Whole families of women are left without men.

You must know about our "long-haired army" in Vietnam. The women operated on three fronts: political, military, and mobilization among the enemy troops. They were very effective in enemy territory. Women made great sacrifices. We know of mothers who suffocated their babies so they would not cry, in order to protect the troops. They sacrificed one life to save many.

(src: Then the Americans Came: Voices from Vietnam,
by Martha Hesss, 1993)

*In July 2002 Mrs.Truong My Hoa became the
Vice-President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In the above photo she is seen addressing the 4th UN World Conference on Women (Beijing, China.1995).

One massacre made famous by the fact
that it managed to surface despite the official cover-up
was the massacre of the village of My Lai (16 Mar
1968). The village contained no Viet Cong - no combatants
- no weapons -just women, children and old men. The
aim wasn't to engage the enemy soldiers but rather
to terrorise the civilian population.

People were rounded up into ditches
and machine-gunned
When Lt William Calley spotted a baby crawling away,
he grabbed her, threw her back into the ditch, and
opened fire

The mass murder was coldly planned the
night before with instructions given to "kill
everyone" in the village. The next morning the
US troops of Charlie Company entered the village.
They met no resistance - there were no Viet Cong soldiers
at My Lai. At 9am orders were given to start the slaughter
of the innocent.

Women were gang raped; Vietnamese who
had bowed to greet the Americans were beaten with
fists and tortured, clubbed with rifle butts and stabbed
with bayonets. People were rounded up into ditches
and machine-gunned. They lay five feet deep in the
ditches; any survivors trying to escape were immediately
shot. When Lt William Calley, the commander of the
platoon, spotted a baby crawling away from a ditch,
he grabbed her, threw her back into the ditch, and
opened fire. Some of the bodies were mutilated by
having "C Company" carved into their chests;
some were disembowelled.

A Mothers Protection...

Extract from
a Time Magazine Article (Nov 1969)
on the My Lai massacre, a US soldier (Roberts)
describes what he saw:

'Troops accosted a group of women,
including a teenage girl. A Gl grabbed the girl
and with the help of others started stripping
her.

'Let's see what she's made of,'
a soldier said.

'VC boom-boom,' another said,
telling the thirteen-year-old girl that she
was a whore for the Vietcong.

'I'm horny,' said a third.

As they were stripping the girl,
with bodies and burning huts all around them,
the girl's mother tried to help her. One soldier
kicked the mother, and another slapped her.

Young girls sheltering behind their mother
as american soldiers order them to strip for raping
before killing them.

Ron Haeberle [the army photographer] jumped
in to take a picture of the group of women.
The picture [above] shows the thirteen-year-old
girl hiding behind her mother, trying to button
the top of her pyjamas.

When they noticed Ron, they left off and turned
away as if everything was normal.

Then a soldier asked, "Well,
what'll we do with 'em?"

"Kill 'em," another
answered.

I heard an M60 go off, a light
machine-gun, and when we turned all of them
and the kids with them were dead.'

One GI, Varnado Simpson, would later
say, "You didnt have to look for people
to kill, they were just there. I cut their throats,
cut off their hands, cut out their tongues, scalped
them. I did it. A lot of people were doing it and
I just followed. I just lost all sense of direction."

Another American soldier, Paul Meadlo,
later admitted: We huddled em up. We made
them squat down... I poured four clips into the dinks...the
mothers kept hugging their children...we kept on firing...

The american soldiers paused for lunch
at 11am before continuing the slaughter. Well over
500 innocent civilians were murdered that day.

A
Survivor Remembers...By Mrs. Ha Thi Qui

Tramatised survivors -
the "lucky" few who escaped

In the
early morning, just after we got up, the helicopters
came and started shelling, and soldiers poured
out onto the fields. I was eating breakfast.
We thought it might be like the other times
the Americans came into the village. They
gave the children candy. Or like the second
time, when Americans came to take water from
the well to fill their canteens, and then
left, and they didn't do any harm to the people.
But the third time, March 16, 1968, when they
came to the hamlet they rounded up all the
people.

Some they
took to the roadside and shot right away.
The people on the guard tower were all killed.
And some they brought over to this ditch,
here. First they
shot Mr. Cau. He was a monk. He lived in the
pagoda. Then they forced everyone into the
ditch and shot them. I was wounded in the
backside. At first I felt very, very hot,
and later on very cold. And they killed-you
see, they fired a first time into the ditch,
and many men, children and women were killed.
They cried, "Mother." They were
screaming. The soldiers fired three more times
and finished the cries of the people. The
first time there were still people screaming.
They fired a second time, and the third time
it was finished, all the people were killed.

Afterwards,
I got up to go back to my house, and I saw
nothing. All the houses had been burned. They
had cut down our village tree by the pond.
They had cut all the trees down in the orchards.
They had killed everyone. There were dead
bodies all over the village. I took a little
dead baby back to the house from the roadside.
It was my daughter's child.

I went
to the next hamlet and found my younger sister-in-law
killed, lying on the floor. And I found her
daughter's body, a fifteen-year-old girl,
all her clothing torn off and her legs were
spread open-raped by Americans.

They had
no mercy, the Americans. You see, they had
come here many times and we got along with
them. Then they came and killed all the people.
They showed no mercy for the people. We had
done nothing to them. If they had killed people
at the beginning, one or two, we would have
known to run, but we didn't know.

I went
back to my house and there was nothing, not
even a pair of trousers to wear, because everything
had been burned. The houses kept on burning,
and I couldn't find anyone. I went to another
hamlet, untouched by the Americans, to get
food and clothing, and told them what had
happened at Son My, and they came and carried
the dead people away. There was a terrible
smell.

My oldest
daughter was killed. You bear a child and
bring her up, and then she gets killed. My
husband had gone to work in the fields very
early, so he escaped. Twice before, the Americans
had come here and done nothing. We don't understand
why the third time they killed the people.
The Americans had lived alongside the Vietnamese
people, and we did nothing to them. We worked,
spent all our lives in the fields. How could
they come and kill us that way? So we are
very sad about the massacre, full of sorrow,
the village people and the farmers, very sad
about it.

(src:
Then the Americans Came: Voices from Vietnam,
by Martha Hesss, 1993)

The cover-up of the massacre began almost
as soon as the killing ended. Official army reports
of the operation proclaimed a great victory: 128 enemy
soldiers dead, only one American casualty (one soldier
unintentionally shot himself in the foot). Colin Powell, then a major, was implicated in writing the cover-up report denying any massacre took place or any wrong doing on the part of the American soldiers. Stars and
Stripes, the army newspaper, ran a feature story applauding
the courage of the American soldiers who had risked
their lives. Even General William Westmoreland sent
a personal congratulatory note to Charlie Company.

A year later, by which time the whole
world new about the massacre, a mock army investigation
was ordered. Even that investigation, with its obvious
biases, revealed enough evidence to charge 30 soldiers
with war crimes. Only one soldier, however, was convicted
- Lt William Calley, commander of the platoon, and
he only served 3 days in prison! After the third day
President Nixon ordering that he be released from
prison to be held in the comfort of his home where
he could entertain guests, cook his own food, keep
pets and live an easy life. And after 3 years of house
arrest this mass murderer was paroled and later pardoned
- a free man, and was last seen working in a jewelery
store in Columbus, Georgia!

In his book Flower of the Dragon, Richard
Boyle, a free-lance journalist who went to My Lai
to investigate the massacre, says: "My Lai was
not the act of one man. It was not the act of one
platoon, or one company. It was the result of an ordered,
planned and well-conducted campaign conceived at high
command levels to teach a lesson to the villagers
of Quang Ngai province.

"The killing, of course, is part
of a definite political strategy, a strategy usually
described as the 'pacification' of Vietnamese villagers.
In his book The Betrayal, Lt. Col. William R. Corson,
an ex-Marine who had been in charge of pacification
teams, describes the pacification program in a DMZ
village complex: 'We conspired ... to literally destroy
the hopes, aspirations and emotional stability of
thirteen thousand human beings....This was not war
it is genocide....'."

It was later revealed that My Lai massacre
was just one of a series of atrocities, all meticulously planned as part of the "Phoenix Program" - a covert
CIA "final solution" project, initiated
in 1967, aimed at systematically destroying the civilian
infrastructure that supported the insurgency in South
Vietnam.

Boyle writes: "When I was about
eight I used to ask my father what he'd been doing
when Hitler rose to power, and he would reply that
he'd been too busy trying to earn a living to pay
attention. My mother would add that people didn't
know what was going on in Germany.

My father's generation shakes its head
in dismay and wonders how
my generation could turn away
from those values which
'made America great.'
But they never told us thatgenocide
was an old American habit...

The village of My Lai -
the Americans slaughtered over 500 innocent civilians

"Now my father's generation shakes
its head in dismay and wonders out loud how my generation
could turn away from those values which 'made America
great.' But they never told us that genocide was an
old American habit, that U.S. soldiers scalped hundreds
of Indian women and children at Sand Creek and held
up their scalps at the Salt Lake City opera house;
that hundreds more defenseless Indians were gunned
down at Wounded Knee, that General Jake Smith ordered
the massacre of 8,294 children, 2,714 women and 420
men on the island of Samar during the American occupation
of the Philippines in 1901.

"For me and for millions of my
generation My Lai came as the final punch in the mouth,
the end of our illusions. We could no longer say we
didn't know. The day we learned of My Lai changed
our lives."

But Boyle was in the minority, a Time Magazine
poll at the time revealed that most Americans - 65%
of nearly two thousand Americans surveyed - denied
being upset by the massacre, Lt.William Calley was
actually viewed as an American hero by most. On the
day Calley was found guilty, President Nixon received
more than 50,000 telegrams --running 100-to-1 in favor
of clemency for Calley. A White House national poll
indicated that 96 percent of Americans were aware
of the charges and 79 percent of respondents disapproved
of the guilty verdict. Shamefully, it was with the
mandate of the American people that the President
was able to free a mass murderer.

Victim of America...

By Mrs. Le Thi Dieu

In 1965
I was arrested by the Americans and brought
to Hoi An. They put electricity in my vagina,
on my nipples, in my ears, in my nose, on
my fingers. Blood came out of my vagina. At
night they put electricity inside my body
and they beat me. They jumped on me with their
shoes. Now when I breathe my whole chest hurts,
and when I lie on the bed my body aches. They
kept me for eighteen months.

In 1967
I was arrested again. They brought me to the
center of the village and tied me up, both
hands in back, like this. They poured soapy
water down my throat all night. My face and
chest and belly swelled up and I lost consciousness.
They took me to the base, and there they beat
me and again put electricity on my body. They
poured water mixed with hot peppers down my
throat. I thought I had already died. Then
they took me to the hospital. I stayed there
a week. When they brought me back to the base,
they beat me again, gave me more electricity.
They tortured me for information but they
got nothing. They poured water down my throat
again, and I stopped breathing.

They took
me to a little house, like this, and one American
tried to rape me. I started screaming, and
he took my hair, which was very long, and
he dragged me and beat me. A Vietnamese interpreter
came and said, "Why do you struggle against
the Americans? It won't do any good."
And I said, "They arrested me, they tortured
me and beat me, and now they want to rape
me. How can I not cry and struggle?"
The next night the American came back, when
I was alone. I cried again, but he forced
me to the floor and put a cloth in my mouth.
He took off my pants. I couldn't scream. I
went faint, and he raped me, and I couldn't
do anything more. Later, the interpreter returned,
and removed the cloth from my mouth. I was
raped again, and I didn't feel anything more.
After that, another American came-his body
was smaller than the first one's. He tortured
me with electricity until I lost consciousness.
He gave me water and I regained consciousness.
The second American kicked me on my breasts
and stomach. Now, I cannot feel, cannot breathe.
And he kept putting electricity in my vagina
and on my fingers. I said, "I am from
a poor family, how can I tell you anything?"

Then I
was taken to Phuoc Tuong where there was an
American base, and only Americans. There,
an American lady asked me some questions.
I saw other Vietnamese girls. Then they took
me back and tortured me again. Night and day
the American soldiers tortured me. Sometimes
it would be Vietnamese soldiers, but mostly
it was Americans. I was locked in a prison
cell with no window-I saw no sky, no land,
nothing. Sometimes I had a little bit of rice.
After three weeks they returned me back to
the district. The first day back an American
soldier came and kicked me in the mouth and
my teeth came out. I asked a Vietnamese man
why they beat me, I had committed no crime,
and I asked for medicine. The Americans came
again and beat me with a stick. I was brought
back to Hoi An and kept there for a few more
weeks. Every time I was questioned, they took
me to another place, I still don't know where,
not Hoi An. Every time they questioned me
I was beaten. More electricity inside my body
and again and again they raped me. Even now
I bleed.

I spent
about four years in prison altogether. There
were other girls, and we used to talk about
the torture. We tried to help each other.
If it were not for them, I wouldn't have stayed
alive. I was released at the end of 1969 and
returned to my village.

Now the
villagers take care of me and the government
helps. I am sick, in the lungs, in the heart,
and in the head. Sometimes my nose bleeds.
When the weather changes, I look down, and
I don't go outside. Sometimes I just lie here,
and I can't breathe. Then they take me to
the hospital. My fingers are very swollen
and sometimes the nails fall out, from the
electricity.

In 1965
I was a beautiful woman, not like now. I am
forty-five and I live alone, no parents, no
brothers, no sisters, no husband. how can
someone marry me? My father was killed by
the Americans. My mother was killed by American
bullets, shelled. My younger brother was killed.
The boys had been playing on the road when
the American came through, and shot them.

(src:
Then the Americans Came: Voices from Vietnam,
by Martha Hesss, 1993)

With time My Lai was erased from our
collective memory and today we are again facing the
same American strategy of terrorising civilians, 'pacification',
followed by cover ups. Just last week (2 Dec 2003)
the US occupation troops in Iraq claimed a great victory
in the town of Samarra, announcing it had repulsed
an attack from uniformed fedayeen guerillas and had
killed 54 of them. Yet the reality was quiet different
- a visit to the local hospital revealed that all
the dead and injured, including an elderly woman and a small child,
were civilians!

If this vicious cycle of genocide, this
old American habit, is to be stopped then we must first
admit to the problem. There never was a "Great
America" - just a "Great Satan". History
has been screaming this truth at us, we must open
our ears to it or we will all perish at its genocidal
hands.

Ron
Kovic, Vietnam veteran turned peace activist whose life the film "Born on the fourth of July" is based.

"Thank you very much
for coming today, thank you for standing up on
behalf of peace and against this immoral and unjust
war in Iraq. You are the ones who really care
about Great Britain and you also are the ones
who care about my country the United States. We
know that you care about America - thank you.
I'm going to send the greeting of millions of
Americans who oppose this war in Iraq and oppose
the President of the United States. Millions of
Americans I want you to know are standing with
you here today.

We know that you have been
on the right road for a long time and we know
together we as americans and you here in Great
Britain we have a rendezvous with history, not
only are we going to stop the war in Iraq, we
have a rendezvous with history - we are going to
have sweeping changes in our country, regime change
here in Great Britain, regime change in America,
and things will never be the same!

Image of a grave yard with the caption
Stop Bush - A Lot To Answer For...

You were born to this important
moment in history, you were born to change this
society and all societies that want to promote
this awful and despicable behaviour. You were born
to this time and this moment in history. It is
your destiny, your sacred birth right to take
this country back on behalf of the people and
we in America will take our country back from
George Bush and we will return it to the people.

If they want to continue to
fight this war, this brutal and unjust war, this
cruel and vicious war, this war which is killing
every single day, and wounding and maiming Iraqi
civilians. If they want to pursue this mad policy
then we will go to the streets of our respective
countries I promise you today we go to the streets
in growing numbers, in growing confidence, we
will go to the streets in 100s of 1000s and millions
we'll fill the streets of both our countries and
we will march as we did today with great dignity,
we will march non-violently and peacefully because
we have the moral high ground, we will continue
to have the moral high ground.

In the spirit of Nelson Mandela,
in the spirit of Martin Luther King, we will move
forward confidently, we will move forward knowing
we are right because history is on our side and
when history is on your side you can never loose.
We are on the right side of history, we are on
the side of love, of peace, of healing, of caring,
of co-operation... You are on the right side, you
have a rendezvous with history. We will not be
defeated, this is only the beginning, we will
win this great victory - thank you very much -
keep fighting."

The statue was made by Theatre of War
using paper mache and chicken wire

It was smuggled in to central London and held at
a secret location until the day of the rally

Faces from every community opposed to US hegemony

Story of a good employer

Pink peace tank adorned with a Bush cross bones icon

Bush - Blair
Blush Blair
Open your Ears
Shut your Mouth!!

Alice Mann

Alice
Mann, Member of Parliament.

"This is a tremendous
turnout, the strength of support today shows that
George Bush is not welcome here. But peace loving
Americans are, we do make a distinction between
George Bush and the American people. His visit
is not going as smoothly as he wanted and you
have all made it a lot more difficult for him
tonight. The free election publicity he had hoped
for is not going to be there. And I believe this
demonstration is deeply embarrassing for my own
government and I'm pleased about that. Because
of this illegal invasion and occupation has proved
to be a disaster for these people, a disaster
for innocent Iraqis as well who die on a daily
basis. A disaster for the british and american
troops and the violence that is being showed now
in front of us, this is the kind of thing that
we see because quiet frankly that man is wrong
( bush statue) the Iraqi people want to rule themselves,
they do not want to be occupied, they do not want
to die under bombs and bullets and guns, they
don't want a foreign occupation force and its time
now for the rest of the world to help the Iraqi
people.

Freedom for Palestine
Stop the Organ Grinder and his Monkey

With presidential elections
looming, president Bush is now having to change
his mind. he says he wants the United States out
now. Well 20-30,000 dead I think its long long
overdue. Our message today is simple: George Bush
you are not welcome in my country! Your policies
make this world a much more dangerous world. The
tragic events in Istanbul speak for themselves
- who else could have united Osama Bin Ladin and
Saddam Hussein? Nobody but this war mongering
president. Presidents and Prime Ministers can
get protection as we have seen in London but the
real foot soldiers on Bush's so called war on
terror are the innocent, are the people who have
been blown to bits, are the little Ali's of this
world who have lost their arms, are the people
killed, the innocent in Saudi Arabia, the children
blown to bits by cluster bombs, and the thousands
and thousands of Africans in the poorest countries
of the world who will not receive the aid they
need because we are having to rebuild the bomb
damage we've done in Iraq. We are here today to
create a safer world for us all to live in including
americans, we don't want a single american to die
in the cause of this illegal war. Our message
is getting across, we have the moral high ground,
and we are right!"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A tragic fire on Monday destroyed the personal library of President George W. Bush. Both of his books have been lost.

Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president was devastated, as he had not finished colouring the second one.

A red haired communist playing drums on the roof of a bus stop
in London - now that's a sight you don't see everyday!

Students against the war

School Students - "Bush+Blair=Terrorists"

School
Students from Sheffield.

"Hi we are from King
Edward VII school in Sheffield. We think that
George Bush and Tony Blair instead of bombing
Iraq to pieces should put more money in to education
for the next generation so that they can build
a better Iraq."